Hava Nagila in Iceland

(First appeared in The Progressive Populist)

In 2017, on our first trip to Iceland, my girlfriend and I sat in Prikið, a restaurant in the capital city of Reykjavik, which proudly advertises itself as being a four-minute walk from the Icelandic Phallological Museum — a repository of more than 215 penises and penile parts belonging to almost all the land and sea mammals found in Iceland — listening to the waiter kvetch about the city’s taxes, rents and lack of parking.

He sounded very much like any waiter anywhere in any American city.

What about your health insurance?” I asked.

“Oh, I’ve got that,” he said, waving his hand in the air dismissively.

“What you just did — that little hand wave — nobody in America can do. Nobody in America is that confident about their healthcare.”

“Why?”

Good question.

In America, it occurred to me, we spend time, effort and money on things Icelanders don’t.

Our waiter was a student at the University of Iceland.

“You mind me asking what your tuition costs you?” I asked

He smiled.

“I don’t know. It’s not much.”

How not much?

$470 per year.

In America, average tuition at public university is about $11,000.

In Iceland, to own firearms, paperwork must be completed, a doctor must certify you to be of “sound mind and good eyesight,” you have no criminal record, and you receive 75% on a test after reading two books and taking a three-day course. If you own more than three guns, you must have an approved gun cabinet.

In America, to own firearms, you need a pulse.

(I joke of course. You don’t need that in some places.)

In Iceland, abortion is legal until the end of the 22nd week.

In America, some self-deputized goober in an F-150 can sue you for 10 large just for driving someone to an abortion clinic.

In Iceland, same-sex couples have easy access to adoption and citizens lined the streets in Reykyavik waving rainbow flags when then-Vice President Mike Pence came to the country.

In America, teachers in many states can’t say “gay” anymore.

A policeman in Reykjavik shot a deranged suspect to death in … 2013. It was the first time any has been shot by a police officer since the country’s independence in 1944.

There have been 162 fatal police shootings since 2007 … in Oklahoma.

In Iceland, in 2008, as a result of the worldwide banking collapse, authorities threw all of the directors of the International bank Glintnir HoldCo. in the hoosegow — 36 in all, for a combined 96 years.

In the US one former executive at Credit Suisse, Kareem Serageldin, was convicted of mis-marking bond prices to hide losses. For 30 months.

In 2016, when it was discovered that then-Prime Minister Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, along with other government officials had money in tax havens like British Virgin Islands and Seychelles, protesters threw Skyr Yogurt and eggs at them when they left the parliament building.

In 2016, America elected Donald Trump president.

Staying in a boutique hotel in a city surrounded by mountains and the ocean and a sky that looks close enough to touch, a city where I heard a man with an accordion play Hava Nagila on the street and then complain that the tip I gave him wasn’t enough, doesn’t tell you everything you need to know about a country, but it tells you something.

Just outside Reykjavik, at Sky Lagoon, a geothermal bath, you can see Bessastaðir, the official residence of Iceland’s president — a big, but not gaudy house with red shutters, a garage, and a sunroom. Tyrfingur Tyrfingsson, a chef who prepared for us a meal of lamb and fish and whale blubber — a meal that included Brennivan, better known as “Black Death” (which has the smoothness of licorice and the sharpness of a migraine) — took us on a tour of the city. We drove up to the presidential house and got as close as the circular driveway. The only thing preventing us from knocking on the door was a sense of decorum, certainly not the presence of security, of which there was none.

In the distance, there was a lone woman walking.

“I wonder who that is.”

“Maybe the president’s wife,” he said of Eliza Jean Reid.

President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, in case these things matter to you (and they do to me), is a former history professor and reporter.

I commented on the lack of security.

Tyrfingsson, who is called Tiffy, said, “Why do we need security? Nobody wants to kill the president.”

He may be right. In 2022, Guðni was reelected in 2020 with 92.2% of the vote.

The president has also vowed to ban pineapple as a pizza topping.

It’s enough to make you want to get married in a place like this.

We did.